Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Backdrop

Silverado Vineyards, Silverado Trail, Napa Valley, California, USA

June 4, 2013

"Reinventing yourself into an impossible future doesn't alter how life turns out. It alters who you are being and what is available, while life turns out the way it does." ...


"Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better."	... Robert Lee Frost transcribed by

This essay, Backdrop, is the companion piece to Worry Or Not, It Turns Out Anyway.

Life turns out the way it does. That's the backdrop for me, the backdrop for everything I, as Conversations For Transformation, do. But it's more than that actually. It's the backdrop for everything I do.

It's the backdrop against which I most clearly observe the power every single one of us human beings possess to transform the quality of our own lives - indeed the power every single one of us human beings possess to transform the quality of Life itself. Life turns out the way it does, with or without our input, approval, or agreement. We have no power over the way Life turns out. You and I, on the other hand, do have power over who we'll be and over the possibilities we'll invent. This is our power to impact Life, to make a difference.

I'm not invested in any plans to fix Life on Planet Earth. I have no preference for any visions of changing Life on Planet Earth. I'm not interested in any beliefs of making Planet Earth a so-called better place - not your beliefs, not anyone else's beliefs, not my own beliefs (God! especially not my own beliefs ...). I happen to think there's nothing wrong with Life on Planet Earth exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't. I happen to think Life on Planet Earth doesn't need fixing or changing. And as for making Planet Earth a better place, I happen to think that, as a place where Life, living, and love can show up, there's no place better in the entire universe than Planet Earth (as Robert Lee Frost may have said). Really there isn't.

And no, I'm not callous, disinterested, naïve, inconsiderate, or disrespectful of the environment in which we live and on which we depend - in fact, on which we, the environment and us, are mutually dependent. The thing is this: even if we do attempt to fix things, even if we do attempt to change things, even if we do attempt to make Planet Earth a better place, then as long as we do it within the same paradigm within which we've always operated, it'll just be more of the same as we've done so far, it will just be more business as usual and it won't make any god-damned difference. Life turns out anyway regardless.

Professor Albert Einstein said "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.". I'd like to suggest, also, that the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of being we were at when we created them.

We have no say in how Life turns out. We have every say in who we'll be, and in what possibilities we'll invent. I assert it's futile trying to solve any environmental and / or social and / or interpersonal problems at the same level of being we were at when we created them.

This is the clarion call to transformation. Reinventing yourself into an impossible future doesn't alter how life turns out - it alters who you are being and what is available, while Life turns out the way it does (to quote Werner Erhard). And it's Life turning out the way it does, which is the backdrop for living a transformed life. Said another way: distinguishing "Life turns out the way it does" is the essential distinction which provides the backdrop for reinventing and recognizing yourself as a being with power and leverage over the circumstances, as well as having mastery over inventing and setting in motion new possibilities. If not, all that's left is fixing or changing things - the Band Aid approach to living. And haven't we been there and done that enough already?

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